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Exploring Asteya

Strategies for helping students cultivate non-stealing in their yoga practice. 

Asteya is the third of the 10 yoga ethics - it is often described as non-stealing or non-coveting. What does it mean to not steal in a yoga practice? How can you address asteya in the yoga classroom? 

It helps to think about the source of stealing behavior. Although the yamas and niyamas (the yoga ethics) seem to describe specific behaviors, yoga is mostly concerned with the source of the behaviors. Stealing comes from a sense of entitlement - a feeling or belief that you deserve something that you have not earned. Why does someone steal a wallet? Why does someone run themselves into debt, using other people's money? Why does someone pass off another person's ideas as their own? In each case, the root of the behavior is a belief that an individual's wants and needs are more important than those of another person. This self-importance, selfishness, and sense of entitlement manifest as stealing behavior.

In a yoga practice, you cannot "steal" a pose, but you can express a sense of entitlement in your practice. Some ways this can show up:

• Assuming that you can practice advanced poses without putting in years of careful exploration and consistent practice.

• Giving up on a pose when it doesn't come easily to you. Sometimes this shows up as deciding that a pose is not very important or useful, and may in fact be quite dangerous!

• Expecting your teacher to recognize you as special, or different than, other students, and to pay more attention to you than to other students.

• Assuming that you should be "as good" at yoga as others, and comparing your practice to other students' practices.

• Wishing that you could reach as far, balance as long, or look as good in a pose as another student.

• Expecting great benefits from your yoga practice without being willing to put in the time and energy to cultivate a consistent practice.

• Resenting, disliking, or judging other students in a group class, even though their attendance subsidizes your own yoga practice by making the class possible.

• Assuming that you know more than other students or your teacher.

• Using a yoga studio's props, mats, and facilities without taking good care of them.

These are all things that we are embarrassed to admit that we ever do - but if you can bring them up in a classroom, and help students identify them, you can help your students cultivate asteya. 

There is no particular yoga pose that will magically develop asteya and dissolve a sense of entitlement. Instead, the yoga student needs to examine his or her beliefs about entitlement and superiority. You can help your students to do this by focusing their attention to how  ego and ambition show up in practice. Encourage students to be happy with their practice, and not compare themselves to other students. Encourage students to be patient with their practice, and not give up when they don't 'perfect' the practice overnight. Encourage students to respect the yoga space and their fellow students, and recognize that the community supports their yoga practice.

In addition, you can help students develop asteya by modeling it:

• Be honest, open, and reliable in all of your business/financial transactions with students.

• Demonstrate respect for other teachers and the people who manage the space where teach.

• Treat the yoga classroom and props with respect.

• Show gratitude and respect to each student, for showing up to your class (out of all the other choices they had).

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